Continuous data protection (“CDP”), also called continuous backup, generally refers to the backup of data on a computer by automatically saving a copy of every change made to that data. While traditional backup solutions take a snapshot of the files or data on a computer at a specific time, CDP essentially captures every new version of the data saved on the computer in real-time. CDP may be performed at the file-level or the device-level. Device-level CDP generally allows a user or administrator to roll back the entire state of the device, such as a disk drive, to any point in time, while file-level CDP may allow a user to view and select a specific version of a particular file to restore.
File-level CDP is typically implemented through a service executing on a computer that monitors specified files and folders stored on a local disk drive or other storage device. When a monitored file is changed, the new, modified version of the file is copied to a backup location. Often the modified file is compressed and/or encrypted before copying to the backup location. The backup location may be a local storage device, or the backup location may be a remote storage device.
When monitored files are stored on a remote storage device, such as in the case of a “thin client” computer booting over a network, traditional file-level CDP implementations may be inefficient. After the changes to the file are written across the network by the thin client computer, the CDP service must then write the modified file to the backup location across the network, potentially doubling network bandwidth usage required for file modifications. In addition, the compression and/or encryption of the modified file are still performed by the client computer, utilizing processing and memory resources and degrading the performance of the client computer.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.